What comes first - music or lyrics?

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Gruhlen

You Wrote:

nah, why bother with what the masses think? that's the beuaty of music, only I have to like it. i'm no britney who has to write hit records. of course i want my songs to be hits but if i write with the audience in mind how can the song stay personal? i think your making compromises on your (i hate this expression) "artistic freedom. besides most people don't get the point you're trying to make anyway, they just give it their own meaning.


Grulen, that was my entire point. There is one point that you mentioned regarding "Freedom of expression" and "Artistic Freedom". These are phrases that do not exist at big labels. The Britney's of the world are slaves to the producers and executive producers and the "Songwriters". Lets face it, ultimately at large labels, the goal is to sell music and turn a profit for the company right? So why not make music that appeals to the droves of 13-17 year old females who are the ones that listen to that kind of music. That is your target audience. Without a target, or a market for your music, your music, and your pride and your lack of compromise gets you written off as a big loss and swept under the carpet. It happens everyday.

I understand about compromise and trying to balance the scales in your favor. There has to be compromise in whatever business you are in. I dont necessairly agree with having something I labored over for nights on end and be told I cannot play it a certain way because it is not profitable. The nice thing about independent labels is that they allow more artistic freedom. But regardless, in any label (indie or whatever) you are going to have to compromise in order for your music to be heard.
 
alfugazi,

your right, except that i don't earn my money by making music. i would like to, but because i'm so full of "artistic freedom and shit" i accept that i probably wont. that don't keep me from making the , to me, best songs i can. i donot have a market in mind. that makes very poor business but i don't care, i don't have to live off of music so i don't have to "be liked". that's to me real freedom and although i would rather have millions on my bankaccount because my last hit sold 10 zillion copies... that aint gonna happen...

one can always dream though;)

guhlenn!

ps i do understand what you mean now. didn't when i posted my earlier post... Greetz!
 
Here's what I can offer

My experiences with writing for the masses versus one's self are this:
3 Years ago I wrote an album of positive pop, verging on Christian music, becuase I thought I had a market to sell to. There are several good songs on there that I am proud of, but on the whole the experience left me feeling hollow. It just wasn't what is inside me. I did sell enough to make my money back and get some new gear for my next album. However I did not become stinking rich and famous. Let's face it, the chances of that a zillion to one.
I am hoping to have my next CD done by November. This time I wrote whatever the heck I wanted. There is a heavy metal tune, a raggae tune, a tune in 7/4 time, a love song, a rap, etc.
A big record company would never do that in a million years!
To tell you the truth, I feel that the big label's days are numbered. People now have the tools to record, produce, and distribute music all from thier own home. I think we are on the verge of a creative explosion like none before, where music can be made and distributed freely in the blink of an eye at very little cost.
I can't wait.
Aaron
http://www.aaroncheney.com
 
you're sooooo right aaron,

that's what really gives me shivvers sometimes , that it's all up to yourself, you know. i honestly believe that a record deal is no longer necessary. i mean if you invest like $5000 you can record an album attract attention and sell albums. at least enough to break even eventually. and then i can do what i really want; play guitar all day recording songs thinking up new structures blah bla blah! (i may have to get on wellfair but that don't matter;))

but still it's a very nice era to live in.
 
For me: writing songs is a process that is completely unpredictable. Usually, I can make a song happen at any time of any day. Songs will come to me out of nowhere. Usually, I write down titles and I have a writing notebook. Sometimes I write songs like I'm writing mini-novels. Other times, I will put words I have already written and tailor them to specific music idea on tape. There are hundreds of ways to write. The most important part is enjoying it and expressing one's self.

What's this about 5,000 & record album stuff and about big label's days are over and etc.? I want to hear more because I want to jump aboard this bandwagon too. On other threads I have expressed my interest in competing with the big boys on a low budget and releasing a CD in the future.
 
Marty

Marty,

These days the way of the big label is starting to become a thing of the past. Yes, it is very possible to put out a decent product for a bit under $10,000 maybe less (production costs) (Thats keeping in mind that you have a decent engineer that knows what he/she is doing...(The guys gotta eat too)......Of course, with todays technology suddenly everyones an engineer. But yes, it is possible to churn out a nice product but there is one thing to keep in mind. You need to have a distribution channel and some big money behind you to promote yourself. Unfortunately, not all independent lables have any means of distributorship and not a whole lot of money to back you say if you are on the road.
I know guys who were on the road and they were lucky to make it to the gig on time because their bus kept breaking down. With that aside, you need to approach the whole band/marketing/promotional thing realistically.

The larger labels seem to have more clout in the production arena.
They have the money to back these artists (not that Im saying Brittney is an artist or anything) and the payola that goes out to these station managers to play there songs. Everyone's got their fingers in the till. I use Brittney as an example because she is an easy target. She's willing to go along with the whole program. But where everything differs here is that the labels have the distriborship both here and overseas. They've got the money to promote all her gigs, play her music on the radio and all the nice perks that go along with selling the image and not the music.

My whole point is that you can make an album for pretty much for nothing these days but without any contacts your product will sit on a shelf and collect dust. But if your intention is to make a limited order (say 1000 or more), gig around town or wherever and create a following who will buy your product then yes go for it. I think that is where most people make the mistake of making an album. They forget that it's not all guitars and women and spotlight. That there's a business side that must be addressed. But Im sure we all make music for different reasons.

Hope this helps.
 
Here's what I can offer

Think of this, Marty Joe:

Let's assume you already own instruments, and you have 10 good songs written. OK? OK. For our purposes we must also assume you have enough recording experience to make a decent recording. That's a pretty big assumption, as it takes a lot of experience, but hey, this is just going to be a rock album, so let's go with it.
Now then:
Decent computer, $1200
Good Soundcard, $350
Cakewalk $300
What the heck, 3 plug-in's of your choice, $400
Pre-amp or Mackie Mixer $350
Two decent mics (we'll say SM57 and AKG C300B) $450
Mastering $600
Duplication $1800

Grand Total: $5450

Amount of CD sales needed at $12 each to break even: 450.

This is from the ground up, and many of the expenses are for equipment that most of us already own. So now let's also assume you already own the computer, software, soundcard, mixer, mics. In other words, you own all the equipment you need and have the skill to record at least something decent.

Mastering, $600
Duplication, $1800

Grand total: $2400

Amount of CD sales needed at $12 each to break even: 200.

Of course, this doesn't take into acount marketing and advertisement costs, as well as many incedental costs. But those are all lower than ever before. For example: You can design and host a website in your own domain name for next to nothing now. You can register your own domain name for $16 bucks a year, and get your site up for $10 a month. Now people in Japan can hear your music! That's pretty cheap!
These are all estimates of the top of my head, but the point I'm making is this: An independant musician can compete w/ a label. If you have the experience and the talent, along w/ enough motivation to continually market yourself and sell, even when it means doing things that are hard or that you don't feel like doing, you can earn a living. NOTE: I did not say FAMOUS! I said you can earn a living. Getting famous is still the domain of the big label.
A label has a huge marketing machine that can outsell a single person hands down. But they have to sell thousands of CD's to break even.
Yes, their product will sound better, but as Napster has shown, most people don't care about the difference between good audio quality and pristine audio quality. Good is good enough. As long as people can groove to the music and get some emotional thing from it, and understand the words, it is good enough.
And finally, (and happily, most important), people have to like your music. The songs and performances must be good. I love the fact that that is really all the matters anymore!
We have come full circle: In the '40's, '50's, '60's, you had to be really talented to get a recording contract. By the '80's, popular music and the state of audio recording had evolved so much that labels were nothing more than giant star producing machines. People still had to rely on big labels to finance their music, and the labels used thier money to turn all kinds of talentless but beautiful people into stars. Talent meant nothing. (Remember Milli Vanilli? )
Now, everyone has access. Everyone! And the only thing the differentiates us all now is: talent.
It's still all about writing a good song!
Aaron
http://www.aaroncheney.com
 
aaron,

you have a way with words... goddamn you must write great lyrics...

greetZ guhlenn
 
John Hyatt was on NPR the other day and he stated that he wrote the muxic first and the lyrics flowed from the feel of the music.
 
that's a good one too. making music and then deducting words from that... i like that. more power to music. i think lyrics are overrated and underrated at the same time. they have to be "up-front" to satisfy the customer but have to be meaningless as to not offend anyone (at least in modern pop around here). Or they can heve a meaing but then it has to be soo cliche...

ah well, IMHO;)

guhlenn
 
Here's what I can offer

Words don't necessarily have to be meaningless or cliche. There are often some incredible metaphors in songs that many people don't even notice. They just hear the song and forget about the lyrics. That's why, as you state, so many pop songs can get away with stupid, innoffensive, meaningless, bland ramblings. (Sort of like that last sentence!)
Take this line from Sting's song All THis Time, which was one of the singles from Soul Cages:
"Two priests came round the house tonight, to offer prayers for the dying, to serve the final rights. One to learn, one to teach which way the cold wind blows. Fussing and flapping in priestly black like a murder of crow."
That is a POWERFUL metaphor, at least to me.
You can see these two priests walking along with the wind howling and whipping there robes all around. You could spend 7 days 'til Sunday trying to describe that scene and never do as good a job as Sting did in that final sentence. (A "murder", by the way, is the expression for a group of crows, just as you would say a "flock" of sheep, or a "pod" of whales, or a "gaggle" of geese.)
This concludes language arts for today.
Tomorrow we will discuss participles, and why they dangle.
Aaron
http://www.aaroncheney.com
 
don't get me wrong. lotsa songs have good to great lyrics. even if they are not that good you can hear the feeling behind it. but hearing britney (yeah by now you must have noticed i do not like britney very much) barfing up "ooops i did it again" makes my blood boil.

guhlenn
 
when the music died

The music.
song writing; And all that was pure and honest about it went straight to hell in the mid to late 60s,
I hit nashville in early 1971,it was hard back than but at least you got to get in and see someone/have your
3 song tape heard by someone,than get rejected. Now days your rejected by a
little box at the most outer door.
I ended up getting a deal with ABC-DOT RECORDS,an off shoot of abc records.It was head up by Blake Mavis
George Straits old manager,A staff writer, I had what I thought was a great song for George.But was passed
over by on old Mavis had a part in writing,It did'nt take long to see how things were done in music city,
I ended up placing 4 songs with 2 outher plublishing COs,Than I left nashville Than I set back & watched it become the trash hole it is today
Ive written some 200 or so songs,cut
One Gospel album,that did pretty good for me in the late 70s,But I would never go back to nashville,where the songs come off an assembly line.The artist are picked like calvin cline
underwear models/don't really matter if they can sing,or play.nashville is nothen but money grubbers,& if you don't have big bucks to pay to get in the game you best stear clear.!!
Remember the real music died in the
mid to late 60s--Early 70s
 
Here's what I can offer

Guhlenn,
My wife and I just broke the news to my eight year old daughter that no more Brittany Spears albums would be purchased. She did OK with, and the healing has begun. I must agree that those lyrics are the most insipid, trite, contrived, meaningless (help me w/ some adjectives here) drivel I have ever heard!
Rusty,
I hear your frustration, and I can empathize. But I think all along people have been writing good music and creating real art. They just haven't had the means to record and distribute it, so only a few people know about it. I personally know several musicians who are far more talented than most of the popluar junk we hear on the radio these days. I have to think that we are at a point in technology where individuals like us have to the tools to start making it on our own, though. I may be deluding myself, but that's OK. I'll keep writing songs that I like and doing the best I can.
Aaron
http://www.aaroncheney.com
 
dumb, mindless, ready to swallow, not warm not cold, hollow, sterile, political too correct, crap music, tits on a cd, crap music, all the same, crap music.

but what irritates me most is this hypocrite "look at me i'm a fifteen year old with lovely naive and understanding ... eyes and i'm will niot have sex before marriage i do not swear i do not live i am in a vacuum tube of cleanliness" attidue but WHEN THEY TAKE A F*CKIN PICTURE... THEN HER TITS PRACTICALLY POP OUT!

hypocrite music... if it didn't exist then britney has the honor to be the inventor.

i forgot: insincere, straight for the cash, marketed too clever, slick, emotionless CRAP MUSIC.

"oooops i did it again..."

guhlenn
 
Is there much difference?

It seems that Brittany Spears and her promoters are on some quest to grab an adult crowd with all the teenie-boppers by going back and forth on innocence and bad girl. Brittany's role models:

I think of Madonna slithering all over the stage in a wedding gown in the 1980's. "Like a virgin" with a sleezy voice.

Jennifer Lopez at last years awards with her body parts practically hanging out.

Ricky Martin's "she bang" which is porno flick with some clothes.

I think of pathetic fake wrestling where they show women and men that are being poor sports and beating each other up and cheating. Don't forget the sex show.

MTV: should be called anything but music television. It should be called "T & A for youth culture"

I think of Madonna's naughty days when she decided to start making out with men and women in front of the camera with some lame drum sample and elevator music.

The list goes on and on. We are all caught between our values, money, and art. Money is the driver of it all. Some of us participate because of money and some of us are not interested. I choose the art and values to drive me. But it's a free country to certain point where we say enough is enough. I draw the line on a few things where it has an effect on the children in the world.

We will probably see Brittany get bored with all this and like Madonna try clean up her act by acting or give an attempt at something most people would think as qaulity. Or she may fall by the wayside like Tiffany and New Kid's on the Block and be forgotten. There could be talent issues here. Nuff said about B. Spears!
 
there is never enough britney bashing! :D

LOLguhlenn

BTW; good point!
 
I agree with most have to say about this matter. Here is another way to help end the frustration...hopefully. The way I see it is this: Writing music (composing) is what it is... writing music. Writing words (Lyricists) is what is....writing words. Somtimes people seem to think you have to be both. Some people can do both some cannot. If you want to write music, write music. Then, if you have trouble writing words, try locating a good poet or lyricists. Sometimes I read or hear someone say they wrote a "song" and all there is to this song are words. I always felt that most people confuse writing words with writing music. It is not. Writing or composing music is what it states: Applying notes and chord structures in a manner that will be pleasing. Writing words is another matter. Some people can write great poems or essays or even great lyrics to a melody does that make them composers of music? No way! Don't try to do it all. It will save a lot of fustration. Stick at what you do best. Then, get someone to help you out with the rest. I hope I didn't offend anyone. I'm just trying to help...Later, Den
 
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